Google Gears Up
Then Google announced Gears. Dojo, its developers were quick to point out, will be recrafted to work with Google Gears, Dojo's old storage mechanism deprecated almost before it was seen.
Gears consists of three more or less independent components that plug the holes in online apps. The three components are LocalServer, a local proxy server with a JavaScript API; Database, JavaScript-accessible SQLite local database storage; and WorkerPool, a mechanism for running web app JavaScript code in the background, so it doesn't block browser script execution. Just what you need on the desktop and no more: It's clear that Google was shooting for just that target with Gears. Very cool, early observers have called it.
Gears aims to removes all the arguments against web apps by giving them the needed offline hooks, and it doesn't tie them to any other Google technology. It's open source, platform neutral, browser neutral, and free as in beer.
The first Google Gears app is Reader, an RSS reader.
Adobe Gives Us Some AIR
In June, Adobe rebranded its Apollo download as AIR. Adobe already has category-defining tools for both desktop and web development, and AIR leverages these, letting developers use Flash, Flex, HTML, and Ajax skills to develop web apps with desktop hooks.
Like Gears, AIR brings an offline component to online apps, but it doesn't require a browser. Apps created with AIR can run independently of any browser and have all the status of "real" apps on the desktop.
Although it's not entirely open source, key elements of it are, including the Webkit HTML engine, the VM, and SQLite local database capability, and the runtime is free. Although Adobe didn't initially plan to include a database component, the company changed its mind on seeing that this was the missing feature most cited by developers after the alpha release. AIR's APIs will work with Gears' APIs, Adobe assured developers, and Dojo will be as supported a development framework as Adobe's own Flex. Those who have been playing with it are impressed and imagine that entirely new classes of apps will be created with AIR.
Microsoft Sees the Light
Although Microsoft's high profile Silverlight tool is being portrayed in media reports as in the same mold as Gears and AIR, it is probably fair to say that Microsoft has different goals than other companies. Microsoft is so invested in the status quo that it can hardly embrace a truly iconoclastic paradigm-threatening strategy as a corporate policy. When Bill Gates or Ray Ozzie lays out one of those grand visions for the company, as in 2005 when Ozzie declared the company's business at risk if it didn't change direction, he's really trying to steer an ocean liner. So it appears that Microsoft is still following some sort of software-plus-services map, and still working intently on Live thisandthat under the 2005 course correction, notwithstanding the fact that the market is sending signals that the road has shifted under the map.
That said, no company is more competitive than Microsoft, and it is looking for how to compete as the Web becomes more of an app space (hosting, running, developing). Gears is a signal that the model Microsoft was competing against or hoping to embrace and extend or to leapfrog or whatever—has changed.
Silverlight, announced early this year, is a tool for developers in the realm of the Web, although not so clearly a tool that forces a new way of developing. This is not to say that it can't be used to create new kinds of software, with a different relationship between the Web and desktop. Those who have seen the presentation use language like "Flash killer" and "Microsoft has rebooted the Web."
Silverlight will work with Gears and AIR. It is proprietary, cross-platform, and cross-browser. It is a runtime for browser-based apps and provides the developer with a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation capabilities for animation, vector graphics, and video playback. It also includes the .NET CLR, which means that developers can work in any .NET language, which is a big deal.
The bottom line is that Silverlight is a very impressive tool that will probably lead to new classes of web/desktop software; compete with Flash, Ajax, and JavaFX development; and shake up web development. It just won't shake things up in the same way that some of these other tools will.
Where Does iPhone Fit Into This?
And what about iPhone? It's an obligatory question these days, but a good one nevertheless. So far, it appears that Apple does intend to force developers to embrace a new way of developing software, or at least a particular way, when it comes to iPhone. The platform will support no Java, and no Flash. Any phonetop hooks that are provided will be Apple's own, and web apps will run in the browser, not as empowered first-class apps. At least, that's the way things looked in the first few hours after launch. It is not clear that something like Sun's JFX won't come to iPhone eventually, but Jobs strongly stated that this is not Apple's direction.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the return to the desktop is that almost everyone seems to have learned the lesson of mashups. (Which is what, exactly? That the market demands that web tools work together? Something like that, I suggest.) It's a love-fest of cooperation: Gears, AIR, Silverlight, Dojo, and Slingshot all empowering you to create new classes of software by working together in some combination. Using SQLite. Just not on your iPhone.
